Bus Roots: Public Bus Doubles as Mobile Green Roof

Here's some food for thought: what would you get if you combined the benefits of public transportation with that of a green roof? Well, you might end up with Bus Roots, a mobile, people-transporting green roof that could potentially add a lot more green space to New York City and beyond.Bus Roots started as the twinkle in the eye of NYU graduate student Marco Castro Cosio, as a way to "reclaim forgotten space, increase quality of life and grow the amount of green spaces" in New York City. According to Cosio:

A public transit bus has a surface of 340 square feet. The MTA fleet has around 4,500 buses.

If we grew a garden on the roof of every one of the 4,500 buses in the MTA bus fleet, we would have 35 acres of new rolling green space in the city.

The equivalent to Four Bryant Parks.

That's some serious extra green (earning the project a well-deserved second place at the DesignWala Grand Idea Competition).

Currently, Cosio's prototype is installed on the roof of the BioBus for last five months and has been going around NYC and even as far as Ohio, and is mostly growing small succulents.

Now, if we could only get a composter on that baby (like this retrofitted FEMA trailer that doubles as a mobile art center and vertical garden)!